I found the Cadillac Escalade I wanted over the Internet. Both my wife and I were told that there was nothing wrong with the SUV and that everything was in working condition. I had to purchase a plane ticket to fly over there to buy the SUV and the dealer picked me up using the SUV. While I was in there, I noticed that there was no sound to the radio. When I asked about this, Ed reassured me that he had already ordered the stock amp, would have it shipped to my house and pay for the installation. He also told me that it was just a matter of hooking the cords up to the amp. I have all this documented and signed as part of the purchase agreement.
A week or so later, we got the amp and had gotten a quote from the GMC/Chevy service department in Yuma, AZ. Ed sent a payment for the amount quoted for the hook-up of cords to the amp. I took the vehicle in to install the amp and when I did this, they found out that the cords were cut extremely short. The service employee told me that it was going to cost a lot more because they would have to order more parts. Apparently, this wasn't just an easy job of hooking up cords like Ed had told me.
I called Ed to let him know the news and he told me to take it somewhere else other than a GMC/Chevy department. When I had looked into this situation previously, I called a Cadillac service department and they told me not to have anyone fix it, but a Cadillac or GMC dealer, because of all the sensors in the SUV. I let him know that this is where I wanted to take it to get it fixed but he refused to pay the additional costs of installing the amp.
My wife reported OrderYourCars.com to the BBB but before Ed got this report, I had talked to him and told him how much extra it was going to cost to install the amp. At the end of our conversation, he finally agreed to send the check.
The next morning, he saw the BBB report and called my wife up telling her that he wasn't going to give us "a penny" until the BBB report was taken off. I told him that I would have it removed after he sent the check. We came to an agreement that I would email BBB and forward that same email to him that I would remove the report after he sent the check.
By the time our SUV was fixed (which took five days because of ordering parts), Ed still hadn't sent the check. We tried calling him today and yesterday. Apparently, he went out of the country. We tried emailing him but there was no response from him. So, we had to pay the remaining amount of the cost of the repairs in order to have the SUV back.
In the BBB report, we didn't mention everything that was wrong with the vehicle because this was our main concern at the time. But there are various problems with the SUV that we paid $32,348 for (this does not include the cost of the plane ticket or the cost to have the amp put in).
Here's the details:
The Cadillac Escalade we purchased has bald tires that need to be replaced and aligned (GMC quoted $1,198.19).The rear brakes need to be replaced and rotors need to be resurfaced (GMC quoted $369.26).
Transmission fluid also needs to be flushed because the fluid is very dark (GMC quoted $213.33).
The power steering fluid (GMC quoted $95) and the power brake fluids (GMC quoted $95) need to be flushed because the fluid is very dirty.
Rear differential service because the fluid is very dark (GMC quoted $207.86).
Fuel injection/induction service because the throttle body is very dirty (GMC quoted $240).
Everything comes to a total of $2, 438.64 of repairs that we shouldn't have to pay for. An honest and reliable dealer wouldn't have let someone buy a car with these many flaws. I could've been in a serious accident on my 4.5 hour trip back home because of the bad brakes and bad tires.
